The Bold Moves That Got This Beauty Brand into Whole Foods with Shoshana Raff

You are listening to the Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast with Debbie Sassen, episode number 182. Welcome to the Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast. I'm your host, Debbie Sassen. I went from being a financial advisor, author, and chronic under earner to building my business. To six figures as a financial planner and money mindset coach, and then onto multiple six figures.

As a full-time money and business coach, I help entrepreneurs create moneymaking businesses and build wealth using sales and money mindset strategies and in alignment with authentic Jewish values. Now let's dive in to today's show. Hello my friends and welcome back to the podcast. I am really pumped about today's episode.

I have to tell you the backstory to how this episode came about. You might recall that two, three months ago I shared an episode with the amazing Asia Cohen. She is a convert to Judaism and she has an athleisure wear company called Transcendent Active, and I was in the El Al Lounge, Ben Gurion Airport, and I had just shared that podcast episode with my audience who I sent it to, my email subscribers, and I had posted it on social media and we were literally getting called to bore the airplane.

And I get this DM on Instagram from someone that says, hi, I'm a friend of Asia's. I would love to be interviewed on your podcast. So I really, I told Shahan, I said, Hey, I'm just getting on a plane. I'm going to the US and I'll look into it. Just send me your stuff by email. I gave her my email address and off I went on that like 16 hour flight to Los Angeles.

I got to la Of course it's family, it's jet lag. It's all the things. It took me a while to get to my emails, but when I looked at Shoshana's links for her company, Cleo and Coco. I was literally obsessed. The colors it's so clean as you're gonna hear about today. Shoshana launched a clean brand, a beauty brand from scratch because of her reactions being postpartum to, you know, various.

Additives and chemicals that were being put into deodorant in particular, and other skincare products. And she has a background in tech and she's very curious. We talk about how Shoshana leveraged AI to help her to build her business and to really create her brands, and she was so committed to finding the answers and really cooking up her products in her kitchen.

She has developed something absolutely stunning. As I'm recording this intro, Shahan is actually in Israel and I'm in Israel, and I really hope in the next two weeks while she's here, we can meet in person. We do seem to be, missing each other, like, you know, if I'm in Jerusalem, I can't stop by, whatever.

But, I'll have to do a little follow up on this episode to let you know if we actually did manage it would be a shame to be so close and yet so far away. But I want you to listen to this journey. I think what really stuck out is, among other things, is shoshana's deep belief in Hashem and God that he really helps you and you're going to hear stories of like literally miracles in our day.

But it's also story of grit and resilience and pushing on, and people don't talk about that. We talk about borrowing money and how scary it is when you're building your business to borrow money. And it is such a learning experience for all of us as we build our businesses through all the ups and downs that really underneath, when you see somebody like out there shining a bright on the internet, there is a lot of.

Really hard work and late nights that go into it. And we don't hold anything back in this episode, and I know that you're gonna enjoy it. So without further ado, welcome to the show, Shoshana. Hi. Thank you so much for having me. Do you like to be called Susanna or Shoshana? I know you go by, both names.

What do you really prefer? My identity crisis. Right. So I actually, anytime somebody calls me Susanna, I'm still a little bit like whoop. I go by Susanna professionally, but personally, and my family and friends all call me Shoshana. So it's still strange when I hear somebody, I guess from the Jewish community calling me Susanna.

Okay. So I'm gonna call you Shoshana through the rest of the podcast, even though your little zoom thing says Susanna, I might get confused, but No, but I'm only kidding. So share with, I was so excited when you and I. Started speaking and then it was serendipity that just after you and I had arranged this interview, I was in the United States and I was hiking and I saw your products in Whole Foods.

So take us back to the beginning of Cleo and Cocoa and tell us why you started your business. 'cause I think it's such a fabulous business model and I just loved seeing you on the shelves before you got, I met in, over Zoom. Yeah. That timing was perfect because it was. Probably the most exciting time of my Cleo and Cocoa career, and then you that you were in Jackson Hole and took a picture of Cleo and Cocoa on the shelves, which is what I asked everybody to do.

Wherever they are in the country is please go to Whole Foods and send me pictures of Cleo Cocoa on your shelves. So that was really great timing. Thank you. I love it. You're welcome. Did you share it on social by the way? Look where I'm II will. I definitely will. I didn't know if you wanted to be tagged, but I will now.

Yeah. Tag me. I love it. It's all good. Free advertising. Let's go. Definitely. So I started Cleo and Cocoa about five years ago. I think the genesis was in my brain. A few years before that, I went through many years I got married and had my children later in my thirties and I had back to back children. And thank God I was very happy.

But it kind of, with, my last child, my body was very depleted and I had to look at my health and look at the foods that I was eating, and I had always liked eating healthy and exercised, except for, I guess those 10 years that I was like pregnant in nursing. There was no energy left.

So once I started to go back to really clean and healthy eating, I read everything, all the ingredients on everything that I use. So I was reading all the ingredients on products that I was putting into my body, and I started to read ingredients on products that I was putting onto my body. And there were just so many ingredients that were so unhealthy, and even during the time that I was pregnant in nursing, so that a lot of these ingredients were not ingredients that I wanted to be putting on my body.

I remember my mother telling me, you can't wear aluminum under your arms. Now that you're, pregnant and nursing. And so I was always a big scent person. I mixed my own perfumes and I made my own scent. And anytime somebody would hug me, oh, you smell so good. What is that? And I would say, well, it's my own little blend.

And I would like even play with different oils and make scent. So first I stopped wearing aluminum under my arms and I was putting perfume under my arms instead. And then I started learning about, there's alcohol in perfume, and the synthetic fragrance can hide thousands and thousands of chemicals that can lead to, cancer, infertility, obesity, migraines, so many different diseases and health issues, and it masks your body's natural scent.

And babies are very comforted. By the natural scent of their mother. And when you put on perfume, not only are they inhaling all of those terrible chemicals, but they're, you're masking your body's natural scent. So that's a long. Way around that. I stopped wearing perfume. I just didn't smell good. Okay.

We're not gonna go there. That's TMI. Okay. So I stopped wearing perfume, I stopped wearing deodorant and I couldn't, there was just nothing on the market that either worked or that was clean enough. And I have a master's in business and I do a lot of strategy and marketing consulting my whole life. And I was actually doing some coaching and some teaching during that period in my life.

And I had this aha moment where I took a look at the category of deodorants and I said, my goodness, if I can't find a deodorant that meets my needs of no synthetic fragrance and actually works and smells good, then there is a huge white space. And I really just, I jumped in, I said like, that a few years later my kids were in school and I was like really ready to focus on I guess, a creative outlet and career.

Again, I jumped in, I did not know CPG consumer packaged goods at all. I'd always been in like technology and that kind of consulting work, but I, learned it five years in. I'm probably a CPG expert, so I really jumped in about five years ago. I found the best natural products contract manufacturer and we spent two years developing our formula and we have today what we call like our FAB five odor fighting ingredients.

because we found, because some natural deodorants work for some people and don't work for other people. And so we took all the best odor fighting ingredients and we put them into one super formula so that our deodorants will work on every body, every time. And a lot of the nat, so. there's a big, like I saw five years ago that in the next five years the shelves are all gonna change and all the conventional deodorants are going to ship to natural deodorants.

Then I said I have this idea and I don't wanna be the one, I don't wanna say, oh, I knew that was gonna happen. Let me jump in and do it. I know this is gonna happen. And so I did. I jumped in and boy I was really not prepared for the ride. so we're gonna get to that, but I just think that your whole like journey, your whole aha moment about,your body being depleted is.

Really a turning point for so many women. And about a month ago, a little bit more, I had on the podcast a functional nutritionist. Interestingly, she was also in tech and she became a health and wellness coach because of her journey. So was that something that you considered was going into health and wellness or It was always because you have this love of fragrance and scent and odor are like, this is my thing.

That's a great question. I was doing a lot of business coaching. Yeah, you were a coach already, so it would kind of be a natural sort of shift. Yeah. I'm teaching, so I thought about it. I actually. Didn't like the coaching model for myself. oh, well, thanks. But I did for myself. No, no, I was said for myself.

I didn't. It's all good. I personally didn't like the coaching model for myself. I would've had, if I wanted to make a career out of coaching, I would've needed a coach. So when I thought about where I wanted to be and what I wanted to be doing, it wasn't, I liked coaching, but I have a very good friend who became a health coach, but she went in.

There would've been more, I have a degree in social work and that's why I combined my social work and my business for the coaching, but it wasn't really what I wanted to be doing. I was teaching and I remember speaking to, like the dean I was teaching at THO college and I was speaking to the dean and he said to me like,

Where do you see yourself in five years from now? And I was like, oh, I wanna be like a CEO of multimillion dollar company. But I had no idea how I was gonna get there. I said if I was gonna really jump into something that is really, I felt that we really live in a time that with technology, because when I was in business school, what in the eighties?

In the nineties, I don't even remember, but it was a long time ago. You're a little younger than I am, so maybe it was the nineties, right? I graduated 89 from high school, so yes. Now I'm telling everybody my age, So it was in the nineties, I was in college. It's just a number. It's just a number. Okay. I just had a birthday this week as we're recording, so I told my grandchildren that it was the other way around.

So you know, my grandchildren think I'm 26 now. All my listeners know how old I really am. Okay. So when I was in college, we did not have this technology, that we have today, and we couldn't, and I just look at it that you can learn so much, you can connect with so many people, and that's why there are so many new brands launching because we just have, between Shopify and social media and now ai and in the last year my business has been transformed through ai.

So I really felt that, when I started LIO and Cocoa, I really, I just felt that, We can do things that we couldn't do when I was back at business school because of technology. And why not just try, And I think I also needed a creative outlet. I definitely had this vision for this brand.

There was a white space on the shelves and I just felt that whatever I didn't know how to do, it was just accessible. And we can learn and you can build a network and everything else through, how connected the world is and through technology. And that was, I guess, Why I, I wanted to just jump in and why I had that idea of, well it can be done and I was blessed with business training, so let me try to do it.

Great. I think, that you just jumped in because so many people get stuck. Building a business plan, like multi-page business plans, and you had a business background, maybe you did build a business plan, but when I jumped into, I left my job at the government. I was working at the Bank of Israel and I jumped in and my husband was like, I need a plan.

So I made him like a rough plan, but really. We have no idea what it is going to take to build a business. Like heads up, anybody out there who's listening, who's thinking about starting a business, it's gonna take so much more than you think. I mean, I don't know. There are people who maybe get a really lucky break, but I dunno, maybe they inherit a business from their parents or something like that.

But even then, as you said, tech is changing the landscape for so many people. So even outdated business models are gonna need to be upgraded probably like every three weeks the way AI is developing at the moment. So tell us a little bit about, once you jumped in, I know we talked about your lucky break during Corona, and then how you even started shifting from that.

Tell us a little bit about what it's taking from you. In terms of your personal development, your spiritual development, resilience, what's going on on your business journey? I mean, if you ask the founder, it's, it looks like we just reached a tremendous milestone. We launched in Whole Foods Market, and that was obviously the goal from day one.

I was creating a very, very clean product, better ingredients than anything on the market. I say we're like Toms of Main 2.0, Toms of main products. They're just a little bit, the ingredients are and efficacy are just dated. And the first generation of natural deodorants that were not as, the clean standards were not my level of clean.

They were as high a standard as I thought they could have been. They were eliminating aluminum, which is a great first step because we shouldn't have aluminum on our bodies every single day in anti persin, and we shouldn't be blocking our sweat glands and. None of that is healthy or good for us, but they're still, some of them are full of petroleum.

Who wants to put gas under their arms? Oh, most of, I'm gonna have to look at the ingredients. This is like a wake up call for me. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Most of them are full of synthetic fragrance and it's really just. What I used to do, put perfume under your arms. So it's a perfume in a stick that you're putting on your, under your arms to mask your odor.

And so what we set out to do with CLEO and Cocoa was really solve the problem of body odor. So we use, probiotics, which balances your microbiome under your arms, gets rid of the bad bacteria, which causes odor. We use mandelic acid, which also balances the pH levels under your arm. We use charcoal, which is like this magic ingredient that just pulls out impurities and eliminates odor and wetness.

we have, skin loving ingredients like chamomile and jojoba oil and cocoa butter. and then our senses are really heavenly. They're really incredible because I'm still a STEM person, but they. Are not synthetic, they're just pure oils. And the difference between smelling something synthetic and smelling a natural therapeutic essential oil is night and day.

I mean, you just, you smell the, that oil and, your head is cleared and you're uplifted and your mood shifts. And when you smell a synthetic fragrance, it's just the opposite. It smells good, but it's poison itself. So that's, you know, I, I have to say in a certain way, I don't know if this is a fair comparison, but it's the difference between eating like really good fruit.

Like baked goods that are made with sugar. I mean, I like really good quality chocolate, bittersweet, 85, 90%. I'm all for that. but the difference between certain homemade baked goods are, maybe fine, but like you, there's a difference between like fruit, right? Those natural things, those natural candies that God put into the world and something that we have manufactured in a bakery, even the best bakeries.

but it, there, there's a difference. You feel the difference, you taste the difference. Yes. Another example is like a sugar substitute aspart or, any of the, what's the other one about the stevias and the monk fruit and things like that. Yeah. Stevia and monk fruit. so when you, if somebody, if you do like whole 30 or, and go like, really, really clean eating and no, no sugar and no sugar substitutes and no processed foods for you clean your palate and the minute you taste a monk fruit, a stevia, or anything.

You taste it so strongly. You know, somebody drinks diet Coke every day. They don't taste it. It's just sweet to them. They don't taste the sugar substitute. But if you do a whole 30 and you cleanse your palate and you detox, I did that once. I did a whole 30 once. Yeah, you're gonna taste that so strongly and say, Ew, this is a terrible synthetic taste.

So it's the same thing if you detox from synthetic fragrances the minute you're exposed to a synthetic fragrance. You're going to notice it and say, Ew, this is horrible. but we're numb to it. Sensi. We're desensitized. Right? We're desensitized. Exactly. I mean, I don't like eat sugar substitutes like I eat, like I don't eat processed foods and I really clean.

So the minute I taste something that has monk fruit or stevia, it's really, really like unappealing. I tasted very much. So the same thing when I smell a synthetic fragrance. And I know people who, I was just on a DPG podcast and the podcast interviewer said that she is, she never allows synthetic fragrance in her house.

And she actually had a party for i for her baby. And on the invitation, she told everybody not to please don't wear perfume. She doesn't want those chemicals in her house. And she doesn't want her baby exposed to it 'cause she's so. Hypersensitive. I have another friend who before she goes to a hotel, she makes sure that the hotel doesn't have any of those plugins in the rooms because she can't tolerate it.

So I think we're becoming much more aware. Synthetic fragrance is being known today as the newest form of secondhand smoke. If somebody walks by you and has perfume, or if you walk into a room that has those. Perfume plugins or those synthetic fragrance diffusers, you are passively ingesting and inhaling toxic chemicals just like secondhand smoke.

You've totally blown my mind. Wow. I thought sitting was like this generation smoking, but I guess that's gonna be the next thing. We're all gonna get up into our 10,000 steps, so we won't have that problem anymore, but, wow.I had no idea. Right. So that's Yes. Yes. That's why I refuse to put any synthetic fragrance in any of our products.

And I think that's also why, going back to our big launch in Whole Foods Market, I think that, we've launched nine SKUs, which is very unusual. Usually Whole Foods will take one or two SKUs, test it out in a region, and then keep going. But, what does that mean for me and for my listeners, what does nine skews mean?

These nine products. So I have four different deodorants in four different scents and four different, I have a deodorant powder as well in four scents and we have a magnesium spray. So nine different products are on the shelves. it's just gorgeous. We have a whole shelf. Wow. Cleo and Coco product.

That's so exciting. So you're like about a month in, as we're talking, you've been doing this for about a month 'cause we're recording at the end of July. Is that true? So we've been in Whole Foods for about a month. Yes. How's it going so far? I mean, it's only one month and people like don't know you, but you've got these great colors.

They're bold, they stand out. How's it going after 30 days? It's great. It's so exciting. It's so wonderful. We have, people like you sending us pictures. Look what I found on Michelle's. As much as possible wherever I go, I try to find the whole food store where I'm traveling to. and so I've gone to all the New York and Northern New Jersey stores and that was just, in Miami.

So I went to some of the Miami stores. My son was in Colorado, so he went to the Boulder store. I sent my aunt to the store in Denver. So we're just like getting pictures of and visiting all the stores. And all of the associates are super excited to see the products. Some of them they email us and say, tell us more.

Whole Foods has been an incredible partner from day one. It is really, really wonderful. I think that they really believe our values are very well aligned and they see that, Cleon Coco is spilling a very big white space in this category. So they've been just a wonderful partner to us. They featured us for their, store associates in the newsletter.

Cleo Coco even got a loan through Whole Foods Market because it is extremely expensive to do a launch like I've just done extremely expensive. Shaking your boots a little bit over that. Yeah, well, CPG is definitely a very, very interesting business model. Different than any other business model because you're there, it's just very expensive.

You're always. You have to have a lot of inventory and a lot more inventory than you sell. So whatever I sold in the last six months, I have to, now I have to be ordering double that inventory. So it's very expensive to launch into retail. There's a lot of, like fill fee, slotting fees, and a lot of, it's very much almost like a pay to play business model when you're working in grocery and it's just.

You get there, but the very, the beginning, like the stage that we're in, it's just very cash intense upfront. Once you have the momentum, one or two years in, it balances out. But it's, so I wanna ask you about this cash intense, right? 'cause I love that you use the pay to play because there is that expression that if you wanna make money, you need to invest money.

It takes money to make money. And so many of the people that I work with, even maybe people who listen to the podcast, are in businesses like a coaching business where we're in services. There are no upfront products and I, a few years ago already, I recorded a podcast that's called Debt-Free Entitlement, where people in service-based industries feel entitled that they don't need to take out loans in order to start their businesses.

Like they feel that they can just bootstrap it. And you're saying it's very cash intensive in the beginning. Which anybody in a product business knows, right? If you have a brick and mortar it, you have to rent a space. If you have a clothing store, if you have a grocery store, and as you said, you're in grocery, it takes money to get started.

All the r and d that you put into it, right? That was a huge cash investment. Time investment before you sold your first, stick of deodorant. So where did you get the courage to go into this business and borrow money? 'cause so many people are afraid to borrow money to grow their business. It is such a good question.

So, you look at it and you just met me, so it's like, like, wow. She launched her product and now she's in Whole Foods. But this has actually been over five years in the making and it's really been step by step, little bit by little bit. you just don't go from zero to a hundred overnight.

Some people, you do see what sometimes those stories. Like road beauty is, those are very, very, even the unicorns sometimes take 10, 20 years to build. You just learned about them last year and that's why you think they became the unicorn. Exactly. I agree with you. Like right, it like they were doing so much work.

Even your r and d, whatever you were cooking up in your kitchen and testing out on yourself, you had to go and buy all of the raw ingredients, the sugar, the flour, not sugar, not white flour, but whatever you were putting into here, the coca butter. you were investing and you probably will never get paid back for that.

'cause you probably weren't keeping it on your, like an Excel sheet that, oh, today I went and bought some cocoa butter for. I don't even know how much it costs. $5, $10, a hundred dollars, whatever it costs. Like you didn't tally that up. Yes. Yeah, a hundred percent definitely. Can I even put a price tag on, the hours that I put into working and building this business, the hours and hours and the value of the ideas.

I own the business and so, eventually. It should be, hugely successful and hugely profitable. And that's when the payback comes. So what I'm doing, is when you're asking about the cash, so it was bit by bit, step by step. So when I first started, every time I spent, even a few hundred or a few thousand dollars, I really thought long and hard about it, and I thought, uhoh, you know, am I just like blowing our savings?

I had a business background and training, so I understood the difference between a hobby and a business. I understood it, um, margins in building a product. So I made sure to price my product and work on. the costing and everything else from the beginning so that I would have proper business model and proper margins built in.

And I learned a lot along the way and about, consumer packaged goods in the category and what it costs to go into retail. And it was really like, bit by bit. My husband, it is just an incredible, incredible partner. He has just supported me in every way.

And so when I needed to put a few thousand dollars, 10,000, another 10,000 into the business, he backed me. he saw how hard I was working and he was just incredibly supportive and, put money in right away. Probably within the first year when my business, when I actually had physical products, I'm not even sure how and I guess it was our money that we had put in initially, the first few, like 10, $20,000.

Some of his partners who he works with or using my products and fell in love with them and said, we love this. We love what your wife is doing. We wanna invest. So I got very lucky that I had some, very close friends and family angel investors and it kind of in the very beginning, it snowballed.

One person came and then his brother-in-law came. And then, the COO who works with them said, what are you investing in? Oh, I wanna be a part of this. And so I actually ended up getting, a really nice chunk of investor money at the very beginning, which was. Incredible because I don't think I would be here today if it wasn't for that support and money that I got upfront and I wasn't.

and most founders spend their first few year, well, their entire career. Fundraising, but usually you kick it off the ground without that fundraising. And I was just very fortunate that I didn't have to actively fundraise. They came to me and they, I guess they, they knew who we were. They knew our work ethic.

they trusted us and believed in us, and they had already sampled my products and thought they were fa that they fantastic. So that really launched me. From there, I was able to get proper packaging and invest in inventory. At the same time that I had some cash in the bank, I went to, I applied to, I auditioned for, QVC is the big find, and QVC is like the largest retail chain in the world.

it's a TV platform when you sell many, many brands got their start on q. Be so, and like, we were just finding our every, I was still just finding my way and I was just, you go everywhere and you apply everywhere and you go to every show and you talk to everybody and you figure out, like, throwing a lot of spaghetti on the ceiling.

You are like, what's gonna stick? What's gonna work, who's gonna, and that was just part of the learning process. So when I went to the big find, I got the golden ticket. I still have here. They put me on, I had to produce a lot of products for them. They put me on air. they had like a prime time called the Big Find, where they launched new products.

And they, we sold out in like eight minutes. my first time sold time we sold out is what, like a hundred, a thousand, 5,000. How many products? No, I must have had to produce for them 10 or 20 or 30. Wow. I can't even remember. That's, it was very awesome. It was very, it was a very big risk. I had to manufacture for them.

and it was very expensive. You have to manufacture and package and I had to have a warehouse do it. So this was like instead of starting in my house and packing and, hiring people to maybe, pack and ship from my house, this was way too big. The. Way that they wanted us to pack and ship it and the quantities that they wanted.

So it was definitely this overnight from selling a few thousand deodorants on my, Shopify store that I created myself. To producing tens of thousands of deodorants, and going on air and selling them off overnight. So I could have made those, I can't remember, it was 20 or 40,000 units and been stuck with them.

It was a big risk, but I thought, I'm gonna make them and I'm gonna sell them somehow. Even A QVC doesn't. This is why I'm in business to succeed and to sell these products. So, definitely when you're asking, so that first investment of, the first manufacturing run and working with the warehouses was very expensive and it was a very big risk and I was very nervous.

but then we sold out and did you sleep at night? Probably not, but we did it and I just worked really hard. I said if QBC. Doesn't succeed. Then I have backup plans. We'll sell it somehow. I'll sell it on Amazon. I'll sell it direct to consumer. We definitely ha there's definitely options that I'm going to, I'm, I'll keep trying until we get the money back was really I knew the products were good.

That, that I knew that gr that Wow. Like really just so much. I have so much respect for you and what you were, even your. determination, your conviction. I think that's really the word that your conviction and the value of your product. And also, as you said, the white space in the market, and that's what so many people lack is conviction and just being so sold.

If you're in the service-based industry, being so sold on your. Self that you could deliver what you're saying. And also in the product, businesses like you have to be so convicted that there's a place and people are gonna want this and you're gonna go out and that conviction will take you.

Right. If it doesn't sell on QVC in eight minutes. Wow. Right. it'll, and you also, I think the timing worked very well because it was during Corona, right? So people were at home and they were watching? No. Oh, it wasn't, I thought it was. It was a month before COVID hit. Oh, wow. That was, it was a month before COVID hit.

So, yes, so I really believed in the product and I believed in the white space and, and once I had those investors behind me, that was just a very big responsibility. When somebody gives you, invest in your business, I can't lose their money. I have to give them, I have to make this a success.

I had our own. Savings in this business. I had other people's money in this business. So that's kind of when you talk about the grit and the determination. There's no turning back, once you've put money into it and there was just no turning back. But I believe that it made sense what I was building.

It was just, it's just a matter of timing and place. So I launched on QVC in February of 2020, and COVID hit a month later, so all of retail shut down. The world shifted. Nobody knew what was happening, but QVC, the show must go on QVC kept going. I was live on camera every month from my living room for probably that, both that whole year.

So I was able to scale and grow very fast that first year, even though COVID had really anybody. So had I launched into retail, had I gotten into even Whole Foods, like I, I think I had sold to like Neiman Marcus a couple. Thousand dollars worth of cases and they never paid me 'cause they went bankrupt.

And so had I been in, had I launched in retail right by then, I could have gone bankrupt. I could have had, becausea lot of brands shut down that were in retail because the retail stores have closed and they weren't paying their bills and they weren't selling. And so I was very fortunate that I hadn't, I was brand new and I hadn't yet launched into retail.

And instead I had launched into QVC, which was a digital retail store that was not. Closing down anytime soon after about a year in QVC when the world kind of opened up again. I just realized that my business model was not well aligned with QVCs. I didn't have in consumer packaged goods, like in QVC and beauty, you have very, very big margins 'cause it's very expensive to work with QVC.

So at the end of the day when I looked kind of, and I said like, where'd all my money go? It was really all in QVC, so I had to make a decision that either I'm gonna be a QVC brand and I'm gonna have to change my products. I have to put ingredients that are cheaper to be able to have a better profit margin, or I stick with my vision and I find the outlets that are aligned with my vision.

So we pulled back from QVC because I wasn't just building. A beauty brand to sell on QVC, even though you can be very successful doing that. I wanted to build like Toms of Maine at 2.0. I really just, these are products that I wanted to put on my body and put on my kids' bodies. I couldn't put other ingredients on my body or on my kids' bodies.

And so I went in the other direction, the direction of my original vision of keeping our ingredients the highest standard of clean,even if it's more expensive to make, and with a really strong belief that I am not the only person. Who is ingredient driven and really believes. That we need to have truly clean, authentic products that really work and that are not harmful to our bodies.

And so then I spent the next couple of years working hard, working really, really hard. D two C, direct to consumer because of COVID got very, very expensive. So that bulk period in the early, 20, 20 20, early 20, 20, 20. Right. So, so in 20 20, 20 21, you could acquire a customer on, direct to consumer inexpensively.

And then it just really got extremely competitive and extremely expensive. and so this whole business model that I had, direct consumer and Amazon and business model, that was when I had launched that was kind of like, you could really. Acquire cu like the cost to acquire a customer was very inexpensive.

You could get your products in front of people digitally for very little money that shifted and it's become extremely expensive. So I get it. So, you're talking about on like using Facebook ads or Google ads or Instagram ads or something like, like that? Yeah, it did. It has become extreme.

I've done Facebook ads only a couple times in, in my business, but. definitely become more expensive. It's working still for some people, but it's not like a slot machine in Vegas like it was 10 years ago. Exactly, exactly. So that is all shifted completely, as a, I think since the, since COVID so.

if I'm selling a $200 base cream, it doesn't matter if it costs me a hundred dollars to get the customer, I've still got a great margin. And if,the whole D two C and if they come back and they keep buying, so that's like a great, when you're talking about a $15 deodorant, it's definitely, it's doable.

It's just takes a little bit, either a little bit more cash. Behind you or a lot more time. So I've been like, you asked me how to do it. Are we doing it piece by piece by piece by piece, bit by bit, by bit by bit. Instead of like, zero to a hundred. So, we've been. Just growing it slowly, organically, authentically, we have, hundreds and hundreds of small cleany clean beauty boutiques and retailers across the country who carry us, who love us.

we have a very high repeat purchase rate because once a customer. Find Theo and Cocoa, say, oh, you've solved my problem, and they just keep coming back. We have, before Whole Foods, we have partners like Thrive Market and Grove Market, and even bite cost. These are like the digital clean beauty, stores that most people will go to.

Because they trust, there's a store called Beauty Heroes who's been carry and clean on cocoa from the beginning and they really, really vet their ingredients and,only carry the, products with the highest ingredient standards. And then what about, wait, what about in Israel? do we have your products yet in Israel?

You need an outlet. I need an outlet. I'm happy to, I would love, love, love to sell my products in Israel. I de products when I come to visit and definitely would love to, to sell it. I don't know if definite. Yeah, if you know of any retail stores that wanna carry, I. To work. You'll be here next month.

I'll have to like think. I'll have to like put my thinking cap on because I would love to see it. But does Amazon ship your products here? We can get some, so do does Amazon sell your products because Whole Foods Yes. Is owned by Amazon. we were on Amazon from the very beginning.

That's very important. Amazon is probably one of the biggest places people will shop for deodorants and personal care. So we've been on Amazon and have a strong Amazon presence from the beginning. Now that with Whole Foods, so Amazon will ship our products probably anywhere. I don't know if they're shipping it to Israel or if you wanna include it with other products, I'll to go and look.

But you're coming next month, so I'll see you in person. Yeah. Yes. And your brother-in-law and we're members of the same, shul synagogue, so, you know, you and I are, are connected. There's always just one step of, people, people knowing each other in Jewish geography. So, definitely.

Are you gonna be in the neighborhood? I don't know. No. My brother-in-laws, they're gonna actually gonna be traveling while we're there. So I don't know if I'm coming out to your neighborhood, but I'm curious Tolum. Come visit me. I'll come visit you. so tell us before we wrap up, because, and I love the fact that you even mentioned that you had given product to Neiman Marcus.

They went bankrupt, you didn't get paid. Like we all have those sunk costs. We all have those business disasters, fires, whatever. I was even speaking with one of my clients right before we started this, and she has a branch of her business that she said it was never my dream business.

And I said, well. Very matter of factly, we can shut it down. Right? We all have sunk costs in our business, right? it's just a tax write off. That's all it is, right? Nothing bigger than that. But when people are thinking about building a business, whether it's a product business, a service business like someone's is, has an idea.

Or life has taken them a certain direction, like you said, with your health journey. My other, interviewee Sarah, she had just a life, thing happen and she ended up in the health and wellness space as well. Like what are the three best pieces of advice that you would give to people who are considering building a business?

Great. Great, great, great question. So, I think a couple months ago it would've been very different than I'm telling you today, and that is because I have learned how to use AI for my business. Ooh, do tell. It is. Incredible game changer. So, the more you use it, the more it gets to know you and your business and who you are.

And, so it just gets better and better. So today, the first thing I would do is you can treat your AI business best. I told my husband. No, no, it's, it's, it's fine. Listen, I will just say I was once having a conversation with Chachi pt. You can tell us like which one of the ais today as we're recording this.

'cause tomorrow there'll be a bunch more on the market. First of all, I needed to write a letter to a client and I wanted it to come out in a certain way, and I was writing all the things. And Chachi PT says to me, are you getting defensive? So I was like, yes, I am for this reason. Pound, pound, pound, pound, pound on the keyboard.

But I told my husband, I said, like, it's my business bestie. I still have a business coach. And I very much believe in business coaching because our fears, our emotions, our like getting, being defensive when a client drives you nuts. I love all my clients. If you're a client listening, I love you very much.

Really. but, I can brainstorm. It's such a wonderful tool for brainstorming all the muck that I have in my brain. Yes. Right. I can just. Put it out there. Even today, I was like, had a half finished email and I said to chat chi, I said, gimme three unexpected ways that you would write this email.

So it gave me some ideas and I was like, oh, I liked version one, which was much more aligned with my way of thinking. I still didn't take it. I can sniff out a Che G PT email if you haven't Humidified it. Right? I can, I can sniff it out and it like, I, it, I just turn off very quickly. That's me personally, but I 100% agree that.

AI is a game changer. And you can, and, just for the brainstorming, but I've heard there are like ways to even have like something, I think Notebook produce a podcast for you. Can you imagine if you and I weren't here and we had notebook, we had little avatars that were like mini uss that were recording this podcast.

Oh, that's scary. I works. I don't know. So I've seen that. I've seen something like that. This whole, and there's an influencer who's just an AI generator and, she, that's scary. There's a lot of scary things about it as well. But you can just say,Be my business consultant, I'm thinking of launching this type of business, as my business consultant coach.

How would you advise me? What are the first things I need to do? How much money do I need to do? And you could say, design my day, what, in my week and my month, and so you could definitely just go to chat JVT. And I could say, I'm thinking of launching an all natural line of deodorant.

Tell me, what does that entail? What are the things that I'm gonna need to do? What do I need to learn? How much money am I going to need? where we're gonna add on another line to her business. I did exactly this. Like, you know? Yeah. And yeah. And what about, and in her neighborhood, I said, can you check out, are there any other things like this?

'cause she has a local brick and mortar business. Right. What's the competition like? And it is so effective. It saves you so much time. Market research. Amazing. Yes. Yes, market research. So that could be like the first step for using it and then find me 20 podcasts to listen to, to learn about, this aspect of what do I need to learn?

And then find me the articles to read in the podcasts to listen to so that I can learn this. It can just do so everything, and you just keep prompting and prompting and asking and going deeper and deeper and deeper. Even more so today than when I started my business five years ago. We have the tools to teach us and help us and do it.

And gonna, and it could say to you, this particular product isn't gonna work because you could say, these are my find the costs. What's the selling price that I should sell it at? Is there enough margin? So help me tweak the product. I actually should do that. Help. Has the product chacha PT ever lied to you?

Like my husband's a scientist and he, like Chacha PT has lied to him about science. You know, he is like, no, I don't think that's true. And then eventually he's like, oh, you're right. I'm sorry. I made a mistake. Yes, yes. Because he's smart, he's smarter. Like he does have like a lot of experience. So yeah, that is, be careful.

I've definitely said like, no, I, I don't think that's correct. And then it says, yes, you're right, I'm sorry. I look further. And it's just got what it's got and you have to keep prompting and going deeper and definitely you can ask it to verify itself and check itself too. But yeah, you definitely take.

Complete face value. You do have to know a little bit, but that's why I guess if it gives you some articles to read and some podcasts to listen to, you can come back and say, you know what? You were wrong about X, Y, and Z. Please make an adjustment, adjust it. These 10 sources don't exist. But anyway, like that, that also gives you sources that don't exist.

Okay. So AI is number one. What is your second best piece of advice for people who are launching or maybe they're even like. A few years into their journey and they're just like hitting that brick wall. Things aren't working out and they're like, should I close up shop? Should I keep going? what would you say to people like that?

I've actually used AI for that. first of all, you're gonna hit brick wall after brick wall after brick wall. That is what it is. To start and run your own business. I didn't know how I was going to f, my first big order was actually from TJ Maxx and she was just ordering a few thousand and I didn't know how I was gonna make a few thousand deodorants.

And what a, that was like, that was my first brick wall. You know what? And that was like, and t But that doesn't sound like it's aligned with your brand TJ Maxx because it's not a luxury brand. Right. Is do you still sell there? I don't have enough inventory. They're good at, if you have extra inventory or you need quick cash.

They sell a lot of nice products. They sell a lot of, good. They sell a lot of natural deodorants. They sell a lot of white body care, personal care. So it's a great discovery platform. and you're getting, you've been thinking about switching to a natural deodorant to your afraid to pay full price, and you find a brand that you've been looking at at half price.

It's a great discovery platform. You're gonna buy it and then you're gonna keep, then you're gonna go to the website and or Amazon and just buy it O price because you like the product. So that's how she sold it to me, is a great discovery platform in that, But at the time, that was like my first big retail customer.

and I didn't know how I was gonna make the product. And you just said, and then, COVID hit and the world changed and that was a very big brick wall. And You're just constantly hit with brick walls. I had to switch manufacturers a few times. I have to, I've had to switch warehouses a few times.

You know, there's, everybody's gonna have a manufactured nightmare. Everybody's gonna have a warehouse nightmare. you learn from it, and you hope that, and you recover. You hope that you're resilient enough and the business is resilient enough. To recover from it and you keep planning. And recently, very recently, I guess I've brought like more of like God into my business and gotten, tried to be a little bit more spiritual and felt like, 'cause I, I felt, and before our Whole Foods launch, before I knew that we were launching into Whole Foods, I felt very stuck.

How is I gonna compete with these brands that have. Like conglomerate money, billions of dollars and millions and millions and millions behind them. And that's who I'm competing with. And how was I gonna do it? And I felt very stuck. Like how are we gonna really grow and compete? and that's when I said, you know what?

Anytime in my life when I've been stuck, we turn to God and we say, Help me, guide me. that's why we're religious people, that we're spiritual, religious. That's how we're supposed to live our lives. So I said, let me, I'm doing good in the world. I'm bringing authentically good products, a successful Jewish business woman.

Is going to help a lot of people around her through, because by nature we wanna give, we wanna do a lot of charity work, ed work, we wanna help other people so we can control more of the tzedakah that's being given. So there's a lot, it should be a trick. It's a trickle down effect, especially within the world today.

every Jewish business person should be. It needs to be and should be blessed with tremendous success because we're fighting a very big battle and financial resources are going to help us fight that battle. And. So the more chesed and akah we have to give, the more successful the Jewish people can be.

So if certain, so I feel that if certain people are gifted with business acumen, then hashem, please bless them with tremendous success so that we can give it back to the Jewish people who have other blessings and other things to give, right? Which we live in that circular society. I say yesterday.

Yesterday I put on my Instagram, I said like that business, building a business is the biggest spiritual growth journey. People say it's the biggest personal growth journey, but you're either walking with fear or you're walking with faith. Right? Yeah. And that's it. Then we just, we keep picking faith, we keep picking God, and he's been with us for all these years.

We won't say how old we are anymore, but righty. Hasn't let us down yet. He hasn't let the Jewish people down yet, like he is, with us and I'm in this secular world and every day I say, please let me be a kish hash in my work. Yeah. Because it, it's so important. People look at me and say, look at this beautiful Jewish business woman.

Look how beautifully she, handles her business. How, honestly, how ethically, so it could be a kiddish hash just help me be successful because I'm wasting so much time I could be doing other things. I'm not wasting this time, I'm spending so much time and energy. Let it be successful and so that we can give back.

But I was just saying that whole trickle down and that circular model, and so recently I've kind of like brought that in and I had to work that out in myself am I just climbing and striving for Gaius? And no, this is, it may be like an incredible creative outlet and great for like self-actualization, but at the same time.

There is so much good that can come from not only am I improving people's health in a very authentic, real necessary way. But as a Jewish businesswoman, like I said, there's a lot more that we can give to the Jewish people through our success. And that's been my deep spiritual prayer and awakening.

and I definitely see the help. And again, it's been bit by bit, by bit by bit the amount of money that I needed to launch it to Whole Foods. I did not have it, but bit by bit, every time I needed to make a deposit, somehow money came in. And still, like my head of finance, it's just like, you don't have the money.

Like you. I'm like, it'll come. It'll come. Wow. It's gonna come. Wow. And so it glio con, it should, can continue bit by bit. That's, there's nothing greater than having hashem as your partner. That's amazing. Yeah. I asked you for three, but I don't think you can top that. So we're just gonna stop at two. 'cause I think just ending the Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast episode with Hashem as your partner is a beautiful way to end.

I'm sure we could talk. Finite. Maybe another time about being a mom and how your children have been influenced, but we're not going there. This episode, I think that you have brought so much value just talking about having God as your partner. Look, just looking for the has, like all of that bit by bit of money that came.

QVC at the right time. The business partners from your husband, like you have been so blessed through this journey and I just wanna wish you continued success, like keep going out there, sharing Cleo and Coco with the world, and we should all really Just merit to be a, as you said, like a kidde, hash, a light into the nations through all of our, all of our business dealings.

So I really wanna thank you for being on the podcast, sharing yourself, sharing your, your wisdom and your products with us. Thank you so much, Shoshana. Thank you so much for this beautiful platform and this opportunity. You're so welcome. It was a lot of fun. Thank you. Thank you. Agreed. Alright, bye-bye for now.

Bye bye. Thank you so much for tuning in my friends. I know that you got so much out of this episode, and if there is one thing. That you are doing in your business today, and because you have listened to this episode, you are going to change that. Now, I want you to write it down like really writing down your goals makes a huge difference.

Are you gonna go out and are you gonna like. Push and go back to people over and over again until you can get your brand. If you have a product brand until you can get it into stores like Whole Foods. Are you gonna pick up the phone, you're gonna make calls? Are you going to look at your friends and family and your business networks to see how you can borrow money in order to grow your business faster?

Are you willing to put yourself and your commitment on the line and go to the bank and borrow money? Because so many people are bootstrapping their businesses. And they're trying to patch it all together with duct tape and with like old broken pieces from their garage or YouTube videos and things like that.

Like you, when you get some help, whether it is hiring the right coach, whether it is going and borrowing money from friends and family, when you get. Help and support in so many ways you can grow so much faster. So write down one thing and send it to me by email, debbie@debbiesassen.com. Tell me what your commitment is because there are four months left to 2025 as I'm recording this and.

And you can make so much progress when you put your nose to the grindstone and just get going. Like perseverance, resilience, hard work. You can make it work. And I look forward to seeing you next week on the Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast. Bye-bye for now. Thanks for listening to the Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast.

If you want to stop underselling and underearning and close more sales, you need to clear the limiting money beliefs. That are sabotaging your business growth. Head on over to debbiesassen.com/mindset and download my free Money Mindset workbook, uncover and dissolve money blocks like hundreds of other entrepreneurs who are now building six, multi six and seven figure businesses, and creating true financial freedom.